# Very slow "Updating registry at 'C:\\Users\\me\\.julia\\registries\\General'"

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** question, pkg\
**Created:** [December 10, 2020, 3:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614 "2020-12-10T15:18:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![devel-chm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/devel-chm/32/3572_2.png) [@devel-chm](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/devel-chm)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 3:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/1 "2020-12-10T15:18:50Z")

</div>

I’m using win10 and julia-1.5.3 from the REPL. When I use Pkg mode to add a new package (or other operations) it starts by updating the registries\General:

> (@v1.5) pkg\> add Pluto  
> Updating registry at `C:\Users\me\.julia\registries\General`

where the updating line can take multiple minutes…every…time…

This seems to be a regression from Pkg adds from a year ago.

- Is there a debug option to see what is taking so long?
- Has anyone else seen this slow down?
- Is there a fix/solution to the problem?

NOTE: This can be very problematic when I load a Pluto notebook and it starts by adding the needed packages to the session!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kristoffer.carlsson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kristoffer.carlsson/32/22_2.png) [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 3:59pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/2 "2020-12-10T15:59:53Z")

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You can do the following:

```julia
pkg> registry rm General

julia> ENV["JULIA_PKG_SERVER"] = ""

pkg> registry add General

```

Now it will update using Git which should be faster on windows. Only need to do this once.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![devel-chm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/devel-chm/32/3572_2.png) [@devel-chm](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/devel-chm)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 4:38pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/3 "2020-12-10T16:38:48Z")

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Looks promising so far! The full clone of General.git process took less time than the update via the package server. I assume git updates will be even faster going forward. Thanks!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Heinz\_Graf](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/heinz_graf/32/8141_2.png) [@Heinz\_Graf](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Heinz_Graf)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2021, 9:57am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/4 "2021-02-15T09:57:51Z")

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Hello Kristoffer  
I have a similar Problem. I use also win10 and Julia-1.5.3. It worked perfect during years. Since about 10 days, I can’t load Packages from the General registry e.g. Plots and others (see next)

(v1.5) pkg\> add Plots  
Updating registry at `d:\Users\Heinz\.julia\registries\JuliaComputingRegistry`  
ERROR: The following package names could not be resolved:

- Plots (not found in project, manifest or registry)

(v1.5) pkg\> st --project  
Status `D:\Users\Heinz\.julia\environments\v1.5\Project.toml`  
[44cfe95a] Pkg  
[9a3f8284] Random

(v1.5) pkg\> st --manifest  
Status `D:\Users\Heinz\.julia\environments\v1.5\Manifest.toml`  
[2a0f44e3] Base64  
[ade2ca70] Dates  
[b77e0a4c] InteractiveUtils  
[76f85450] LibGit2  
[8f399da3] Libdl  
[56ddb016] Logging  
[d6f4376e] Markdown  
[44cfe95a] Pkg  
[de0858da] Printf  
[3fa0cd96] REPL  
[9a3f8284] Random  
[ea8e919c] SHA  
[9e88b42a] Serialization  
[6462fe0b] Sockets  
[cf7118a7] UUIDs  
[4ec0a83e] Unicode

(v1.5) pkg\>

(v1.5) pkg\> registry st  
Registry Status  
[bbcd6645] JuliaComputingRegistry ([https://github.com/JuliaComputing/JuliaComputingRegistry](https://github.com/JuliaComputing/JuliaComputingRegistry))

As you suggested, I removede the registry and then added it again. Then

(v1.5) pkg\> registry add General  
Cloning registry from “[GitHub - JuliaRegistries/General: The official registry of general Julia packages](https://github.com/JuliaRegistries/General.git)”  
ERROR: failed to clone from [GitHub - JuliaRegistries/General: The official registry of general Julia packages](https://github.com/JuliaRegistries/General.git), error: GitError(Code:ERROR, Class:OS, failed to send request: Der Servername oder die Serveradresse konnte nicht verarbeitet werden.

Pleas can you help me?  
Thanks!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kristoffer.carlsson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kristoffer.carlsson/32/22_2.png) [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2021, 6:33pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/5 "2021-02-15T18:33:43Z")

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Are you using JuliaPro or standard Julia?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Heinz\_Graf](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/heinz_graf/32/8141_2.png) [@Heinz\_Graf](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Heinz_Graf)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2021, 7:51pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/6 "2021-02-15T19:51:40Z")

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Hi,  
I’m using standard Juli. After having had this problem, I tried also Julia Pro.But there I had the same kind of errors.  
I checkt “registry”, but with the following error messages, I coud’t get further.

(v1.5) pkg\> registry up  
Updating registry at `d:\Users\Heinz\.julia\registries\JuliaComputingRegistry`

(v1.5) pkg\> add Plots  
ERROR: The following package names could not be resolved:

- Plots (not found in project, manifest or registry)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kristoffer.carlsson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kristoffer.carlsson/32/22_2.png) [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2021, 8:53pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/7 "2021-02-15T20:53:02Z")

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Try clear out `d:\Users\Heinz\.julia\registries` completely.

Other than that, are you behind some proxy or got any special network settings that might interfere with the registry download?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Heinz\_Graf](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/heinz_graf/32/8141_2.png) [@Heinz\_Graf](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Heinz_Graf)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2021, 9:40pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/8 "2021-02-15T21:40:44Z")

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Thanks a lot, I will try this tomorrow.  
To your question concerning special network settings: Can the LOAD\_PATH setting have some influence on the observed behavior and how must this setting be? How can the LOAD\_PATH be changed?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![erans](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/erans/32/22032_2.png) [@erans](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/erans)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2021, 12:09am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/9 "2021-02-16T00:09:26Z")

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This does indeed seem to work. I’m curious though, prior to `registry rm General` this was my registry:

```julia
pkg> registry st
Registry Status
 [23338594] General (https://github.com/JuliaRegistries/General.git) 

```

is this not already Git?

In fact, this is the exact same output I get after making the change. Why is the update time all of a sudden so different?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Heinz\_Graf](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/heinz_graf/32/8141_2.png) [@Heinz\_Graf](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Heinz_Graf)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2021, 9:00am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/10 "2021-02-16T09:00:49Z")

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Good morning Kristoffer  
Thank you again for your hint. It worked!  
After deleting “registry” and deinstalling julia 1.5.3, I reinstalled Julia 1.5.3.  
After starting Julia and “registry status” there was no registry. Then I added registry with “registry add General” and it was done!  
The reason for the problems are still unknown. But lets now move on!  
Thank you again for your help.

PS. A good side-effect was, that I learned a lot more about Pkg.jl and the Registry!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Heinz\_Graf](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/heinz_graf/32/8141_2.png) [@Heinz\_Graf](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Heinz_Graf)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2021, 9:03am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/11 "2021-02-16T09:03:25Z")

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Good morning Kristoffer  
Thank you again for your hint. It worked!  
After deleting “registry” and deinstalling julia 1.5.3, I reinstalled Julia 1.5.3.  
After starting Julia and “registry status” there was no registry. Then I added registry with “registry add General” and it was done!  
The reason for the problems are still unknown. But lets now move on!  
Thank you again for your help.

PS. A good side-effect was, that I learned a lot more about Pkg.jl and the Registry!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kristoffer.carlsson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kristoffer.carlsson/32/22_2.png) [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2021, 10:42am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/12 "2021-02-16T10:42:11Z")

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> [@erans](#):
>
> is this not already Git?

It should be, I am not sure why it didn’t work.

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**Author:** ![erans](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/erans/32/22032_2.png) [@erans](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/erans)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2021, 7:42pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/13 "2021-02-16T19:42:27Z")

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Hmm…

As a side note, when I added a package to my default environment today the registry update again took well over a minute 🤷‍♂️

I suppose this is not the end of the world, but a bit frustrating that simply communicating with the registry comes with so much time overhead.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DNF](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/dnf/32/10191_2.png) [@DNF](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/DNF)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2021, 8:00pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/14 "2021-02-16T20:00:02Z")

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Perhaps this is off-topic, but I found the Windows experience frustrating enough that I installed Julia to WSL instead. So far this is a significant improvement over ‘ordinary Windows’, shell mode is nicer, too.

I wonder if there are any drawbacks, or is this basically the best solution for windows?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kristoffer.carlsson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kristoffer.carlsson/32/22_2.png) [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2021, 10:20am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/15 "2021-02-17T10:20:07Z")

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> [@erans](#):
>
> As a side note, when I added a package to my default environment today the registry update again took well over a minute 🤷‍♂️
> 
> I suppose this is not the end of the world, but a bit frustrating that simply communicating with the registry comes with so much time overhead.

It’s bad on Windows. Should be better in the upcoming 1.6. For now you can do:

```julia
julia> ENV["JULIA_PKG_SERVER"] = ""

pkg> registry rm General

pkg> registry add General

```

and you will get a git version of the registry instead which should be faster to update.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![magister-ludi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/magister-ludi/32/4003_2.png) [@magister-ludi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/magister-ludi)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2021, 12:06pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/16 "2021-02-17T12:06:44Z")

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Depending on what is required, WSL is probably a good solution. I did try it and the improvements in speed were very good.

However I also run a Linux installation in VirtualBox, and it turns out that VirtualBox and WSL can’t be installed at the same time. I had to choose between the two, so I chose VirtualBox.

Both Linux’y systems were much faster than Windows (all running on the same hardware, of course). Without any real knowledge on my part, my guess is that a lot of this is because the Windows file system is really slow.

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**Author:** ![erans](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/erans/32/22032_2.png) [@erans](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/erans)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2021, 11:06am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/17 "2021-02-22T11:06:48Z")

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This is what I already did…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![erans](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/erans/32/22032_2.png) [@erans](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/erans)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2021, 11:07am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/18 "2021-02-22T11:07:55Z")

</div>

Thanks for the tip, but unfortunately I’m doing some of this setup for work and trying to convince our IT that we should have WSL installed is just not a battle I’m willing to wage at the moment 😅

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![erans](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/erans/32/22032_2.png) [@erans](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/erans)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2021, 9:57pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/19 "2021-04-10T21:57:50Z")

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Hi @kristoffer.carlsson,  
just as a follow up to the comment that things should be better in 1.6.  
I’m still experiencing registry update times in the minutes range (1-2 I’d say).

Not the end of the world since this is not something that’s done constantly, but it does seem I bit slower than I would have expected.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Brad\_Carman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/brad_carman/32/17631_2.png) [@Brad\_Carman](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Brad_Carman)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2023, 4:14am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/very-slow-updating-registry-at-c-users-me-julia-registries-general/51614/20 "2023-07-07T04:14:18Z")

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I know this is an old thread, but I’m experiencing this issue with Julia v1.9. I tried the fix recommended, but fetching takes a long time, several minutes. More specifically, after fetching reaches 100%, this is where the stall happens. I suspect the problem is related to security software I have installed, but is there some way I can debug this further? Maybe a more verbose output?